Labour MEP offered £10,000 to have sex with me, claims King

The Labour MP Oona King claimed yesterday that she had been offered £10,000 by a Labour MEP to have sex with him. She said the "indecent proposal" offer was made when she was an assistant at the European Parliament.

The Labour MP Oona King claimed yesterday that she had been offered £10,000 by a Labour MEP to have sex with him. She said the "indecent proposal" offer was made when she was an assistant at the European Parliament.

Ms King, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and a parliamentary aide to the Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, has been frequently tipped for promotion. She declined to name the man, but said she had told him to "go to hell".

She said: "When I worked as an assistant and speech writer at the European Parliament, another British Labour MEP offered me £10,000 out of his cost allowance if I'd sleep with him.

"I told him to go to hell, and I complained to some other politicians, who had a go at him. But it was because of this same man that I decided to go into politics."

Ms King wrote in the Daily Mirror that he asked her to make a telephone call to his constituency office because he did not know how to dial the UK from Brussels, 10 years after he was first elected. She said Parliament was "stuffed with mediocre men". She wrote: "He said to me: 'Oh Oona love, can you go and ring my constituency office? I don't know how to get through to the UK from here'."

Ms King, 37, a Blair loyalist who worked as an assistant to Glenys Kinnock before entering Parliament, spoke out after researchers found sexist remarks, bullying and intimidation were still part of life for women MPs.